Water Bottle Design

To gather a baseline I looked at a water bottle by Contigo1 and created an affinity diagram2 in order to figure out the specific needs/desires of a water bottle user. The most critical functions are that a water bottle hold water and that it doesn't spill unintentionally. Though the Contigo has great features like one handed opening and a fold away carry loop3 (which allowed us to carry bananas in the same hand.) However it failed the spill test, It opened when dropped4 and when placed inside a bag5. A heuristic analysis on the bottle found other areas it could improve: permanent warnings about leak potential and difficulty opening.6

Personal Thoughts: Conducting testing on a random water bottle and then extrapolating the findings to the users was difficult. I think it would be more useful to study the most common water bottle used by the users. However I did learn why no students use this style of bottle - it spills.

2. Exploration Phase

Fly-on-the-wall observation was conducted to learn more about the full-stack development students7,8. Because the location was a large and busy lunch room the observation wouldn't unduly influence the results. Observations were recorded on a worksheet focusing on observed activities, environment, interactions, objects, and users9. The main takeaways were that organic conversations were important, there is a modern clean look to the kitchen area, and 84% of water bottles observed had a small mouth. We would learn later during user interviews that this was because they feared spilling water on other people's computer.

Personal Thoughts: It's fun to casually spy on everyone around you in the name of research. I wish I'd taken photos of the people in their environment to refer back to when I later got ideas. I felt like at times I couldn't see the forest for the trees. To help that in the future I'd like to compare notes with another observer when possible.

3. Concept Generation Phase

Based on these observations three design concepts were created:

The Modern Romantic10 embraced the clean, sleek, white and aluminum look of the lunch room with an all white metal wine bottle.

The Full Stack Jokester11 is a pun on "full-stack developer" and is a bottle shaped like a stack of pancakes with a lump of butter for a cap.

The Happy Gamer12 was inspired by all the board games and video games being played. It would be shaped like a warp tunnel from Mario video games, with a flower for a stopper.

A group critique was performed to determine the best concept. The Full Stack Jokester was chosen and improvements were suggested:

If the bottle unscrewed in the center it would be easy to clean, would create two "half stacks" furthering the pun, and could be used as a bowl for the free cereal available at Prime Academy.

Change the name from The Full Stack Jokester to The Full Stack​.

Personal Thoughts: The Happy Gamer wasn't a very strong idea. It mostly came from thinking about what drinking vessels are water bottle shaped that could apply to the user. I don't think I'd do anything differently because I knew the Modern Romantic and The Full Stack were such solid concepts and there wasn't enough time left before the deadline to come up with something better.

4. Early Prototype Iteration

First a proof-of-principle prototype was created to test if a water bottle that looked like a stack of pancakes was funny14. Peer evaluation determined it was. Next a more realistic prototype was created out of balsa foam15 at Leonardo's Basement16. The syrup was made out of lots of hot glue and the butter cap was half of a ping pong ball. The two stacks were held together with a recessed magnet (not shown)18. A mock up of the two stacks was created to show what the bottle would look like when separated19.

Personal Thoughts: I love building both digital and especially physical prototypes. Because of unfamiliarity with the resources available at Leonardo's Basement it was challenging to find the correct material. It is only by eventually asking for help that the prototype ended up looking good.

5. User Testing

A script was written and four full-stack development students were tested.

Personal Thoughts: There is this weird Uncanny Valley to bridge when handing someone a prototype that I find influences my results. It's like you are playing pretend with the user, "This model opens with magnets, but the real one would unscrew. Do you like that?", "The texture would be plastic, not powdery foam. Ignoring that, how does it feel in your hand?". I can only think that more experience would help, or to sit next to a professional and see how they would conduct the test with your prototype.

6. Results and Presentation to Client

All four full-stack developers found the bottle hilarious and they liked the feel of it. All of them said that they'd like to own one. The half stack feature did not interest them. With all the information synthesized I gave a presentation using Keynote to school staff.

Personal Thoughts: I found the presentation difficult because I didn't understand my goals and my audience as well as I should have. At first I made a Keynote presentation that looked a lot like this portfolio page showing every twist and turn. Then I realized that I wasn't hired to show them "how the sausage was made" rather they wanted to see the results. The presentation became shorter and only focused on the positives of the design. I know now that the goal is somewhere in-between. You want to walk them through the process and make a narrative out of it. Also I gave the presentation in a light hearted salesman style that might not work in more professional environments with strangers that are paying me.

7. Moving ForwardThere is more work to be done before this water bottle can be put into production. Here are my recommendations: